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All Cargo Express president Gilbert Chang. All Cargo is a Richmond company that specializes in shipping cars worldwide.

I do a lot of Vancouver Business Headshots as part of my business, so the the owners of the newspapers I work for, Glacier Media, asked me to do the photography for their magazine, Profiles of Excellence. I ended up spending the better part of November and December last year running around all over Vancouver shooting portraits for the project. It was a pretty cool job for me, that had me going from everything from financial service offices in downtown to shipping companies out in Richmond.

Here are some of favourite photos from the project.

Fairlane Collision & Auto Glass Autobody shop owner Evelyn Caleb.

OPAL by Element show suite.

Odlum Brown President and CEO Debra A. Hewson in her Vancouver office.

Tech Stuff:The Mustang in the container, ready for shipping.

With the photo of Gilbert Chang from All Cargo Express, I had taken several of portraits in their warehouse, but after that I went out to photograph some of the cars being loaded into shipping containers. On one of the shots, the flash didn’t fire, and I got this crazy … Read the rest

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That’s me at work in the Umlazi Township, near Durban South Africa, circa 1996.

Squamish Chief reporter Jennifer Thuncher wrote this great profile on me for her ‘About a Local” column, so I thought I would share it here. I was ducking her on this for a while, as I’m actually pretty shy, but she did a great job. I thought it was important to mention some of the PTSD issues I dealt with after my time as a photographer in South Africa. It’s a common issue with journalists, and something that we as a profession tend not to deal wit that well.… Read the rest

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Canadian luge racer Reid Watts at turn four of the Whistler Sliding Centre, which was clear of ice at the time of the photo.

One of my favourite regular jobs is the Whistler Magazine. It publishes both a summer and winter edition, and each takes about five or six weeks to get through. Lately, I’ve been specializing in Vancouver headshots, so this is a nice break from that. It’s a nice mix of editorial portraits and food photography, two things I love to do.

Apres Ski photo shoot at the Bearfoot Bistro.

My friend Sarah Morden and her boyfriend did the modelling duty on this photo for a feature story on Whistler’s best pizza places.

Pemberton Potato Pizza at Whistler’s Creekbread restaurant.

Tech Stuff:The behind the scenes view of the Creekbread shoot.
I walked into Creekbread, which is a local Whistler restaurant that specializes in wood fired pizza. They had this great looking iron caldron on a wood fired hearth that they use making the tomato pizza sauce. I took one look at it and knew that was the shot I wanted. It was a major operation to get the lighting into the kitchen without knocking anything over, … Read the rest

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Husband and wife co-owners Erin Copeland and Sean Tremblay of the Tall Tree Bakery, which won for Best Bakery.

I had a pretty interesting assignment the other day, photograph twenty business portraits to go with the Squamish Chief’s annual Reader’s Choice magazine. It’s a pretty big deal for the businesses, especially with so many new businesses in Squamish over the last few years. I only had three days to organize and photograph it all, and we were right in the middle of the wettest October ever recorded in Squamish, and if you know anything about Squamish, it’s that it’s already a really rainy place the best of times, which made it a pretty interesting couple of days of shooting.

I really wanted it to be more than a series of Squamish headshots, so I took a lot of effort to get a feel for the different businesses.

Chris Harper of OTP Performance.

Chris from OTP is an old friend of mine. Twenty years ago when I was just starting out as a commercial photographer, and he was a young professional snowboarder, I took a photo of him that eventually ended up being used to represent cool snowboarders for the … Read the rest

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Nine of the twenty three business portraits I photographed for an international financial services company at their annual meeting in Whistler.

I received an interesting request for some Vancouver headshots the other day. It was from a financial services company who were having their annual meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Whistler. The company wanted a set of matching business portraits, or headshots, and since their executives were spread all over the world, Vancouver, Asia, England, I had to do the photography in the middle of their very busy annual meeting.

I set up my studio in an empty board room at the Hilton first thing that morning, as the first group was set to come down during the morning coffee break. In 20 minutes, I shot the first six portraits, or about one every three minutes for both a tight head and shoulders portrait and a 3/4 length relaxed business portrait. I photographed the last 17 portraits in about an hour over the lunch break.

I do a lot photos for Whistler restaurants, and the Alta Bistro is one of my favourites. I’ve been there a few times over the last 18 months, the first time to do a portrait of owner Eric Griffith for the West Ender in Vancouver, then later we were there for a food shot to go with the Pique’s Chef’s Choice Recipe Book.

The Alta Bistro is know for it’s deep commitment to a sustainable farm to table menu, as well as having one of the best wine lists in town.

Another view of the Baguettes with a Poolish Ferment dish we photographed for the Chef’s Choice, this time with the famous wall of preserves in the background.

Eric Griffith in front of the wall of preserves that is such a dominating feature of the Alta Bistro. Several well known photographers have photographed him against the preserves, so it’s interesting to see the different versions. I shot this for a story the West Ender was doing on the Cornucopia festival in Whistler, … Read the rest

Apr

10

2016

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I photographed this really great looking burger, made from organic Pemberton raised beef, at the Cure Lounge at The Nita Lake Lodge for the Pique Magazine’s Chef’s Choice Recipe Book. I’d been at the Nita Lake Lodge a few months earlier and done an outside photo of a dish at the restaurant on the patio, so I had a pretty good idea that I wanted to do the shot outside, looking out to the iconic Nita Lake.

I’m really proud of the work I did for the Chef’s Choice book. We shot over 30 photos for the 128 page book in two and half weeks. One of the chef’s at the Nita lake had some experience in cook publishing, and he said it usually takes a year to do a similar project. You can find it at Armchair Books in the Whistler Village.

Here’s the behind the scenes via of the shoot. It was a relatively complex lighting set up, with three powerful Alien Bee studio strobes to light the burger. The day was actually kind of overcast and cold, so to get the warm background, I used some 1/8 CTB (convert to blue) cooling gels on the lights. … Read the rest

Salt encrusted, roast beet in front of a outdoor fireplace at the Nita Lake Lodge. Thursday, October 2nd, 2014.

Tech Stuff:

Salt encrusted, roast beet in front of a outdoor fireplace at the Nita Lake Lodge. Thursday, October 2nd, 2014.

All the food photos were highly technical set ups, using multiple studio strobes. One of the most interest shots to get was the one of the salt encrusted beet at the Nita Lake Lodge. I’d been there last year in the winter and noticed that they had some portable fire places on the patio in front of the bar. I called ahead and asked them if they could set … Read the rest

This year I got the assignment to photograph the portraits for the insiders feature of the Whistler FAQ Magazine, which is the resort magazine published by the Pique Magazine. I love shooting editorial portraits, and when I get an assignment, I’m all over it.

Shoots like this take a lot of planning and preparation. The first thing I did was get FAQ Editor Alison Taylor to send me the story outlines for each of the subjects so I could get an idea of where to pose them. Tess Klein and Tory Martindale were easy, as they both worked out of venues at the Four Seasons. Harrison Stoker is kind of a guy around town, so I asked him what would would be a good location that summed what he does, and he suggested the Brewery.

I did a lot pre-visualization of what I wanted, but you also have to be able to think on your feet as well. The … Read the rest

May

08

2014

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Last February, my buddy, Vancouver graphic designer Jung Shin got me to come down to Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, to photograph the menu of the new Sura Restaurant. I had photographed the original Sura in the West End last year, and they had grown so fast that they were opening a brand new restaurant in Richmond.

A hot pot in a stone bowl. The stone bowl holds the heat until the last sizzling bit.

Beef ready for the BBQ

Some tasty looking ribs.

Tech Stuff
A behind the scenes view of my lighting set up at Sura. We started 10:00 PM, after the restaurant had closed, and ended up working until 2:00 AM of two nights in a row. It was February when we did the shoot, and it meant a couple of late night drives in driving snow storms.

Contact

David Buzzard Photographydbuzzard@mac.com
(604) 938-4105
I might not be able to pick up the phone if I'm working or travelling, so please feel free to either leave a message, text, or e-mail me, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.